Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.

This piece from Wired actually sparked a recall that affects 1.4 million Fiat Chrysler vehicles. During the test, hackers were able to use an exploit to "kill" the engine, disable the brakes and track location. Pretty scary stuff.

Despite Facebook's insistence that its "real names" policy keeps its users safe, a new report reveals that Facebook is the least safe place for women online. And things are turning more explosive, as stories emerge that Facebook has been changing its users' names without their consent -- and the company isn't allowing them to remove their real names from their accounts. Meanwhile, a furious LGBT coalition has rallied around the safety threats posed to its communities by the policy. Though, it was unsuccessful in blocking the company from marching in America's largest gay pride parade.

Facebook's ongoing war on pseudonyms became well-documented in 2011 when a blogger risking her life to report on crime in Honduras was suspended by the company, under its rule requiring everyone to use their real name on the social network. The problem re-emerged in September 2014 when Facebook's policy locked an eye-opening number of LGBT accounts in violation of the "real names" rule. Facebook met with Bay Area LGBT community representatives, offered an apology, then suggested a policy change was in the works. Surprise: It never came. Nine months later, Facebook has failed to solidify or clarify this policy, and one organization has bad news for Facebook's years of "real name" policy implementation.

Twitter thrives on its ability to understand both your tweets and the hot topic of the day, and it needs every bit of help it can get -- including from computers. Accordingly, the social network just snapped up Whetlab, a startup that makes it easier to implement machine learning (aka a form of artificial intelligence). The two companies are shy about what the acquisition means besides an improvement to Twitter's "internal machine learning efforts." However, the likely focus is on highlighting the content that's most relevant to you based on your activity and who you follow, as well as hiding abusive tweets before you have to reach for the "block" option. Whetlab's technology could get the ball rolling on these robotic discovery techniques much faster than before, and give you a custom-tailored Twitter experience that requires little effort on your part.

You can't be sent to prison for kinda sorta threats in the real world, and that now applies to the internet as well. The US Supreme Court has overturned the conviction inAnthony Elonis v. United States on the grounds that online threats aren't illegal unless they're clearly intentional -- not just that a "reasonable person" would see them as hostile. When Elonis raged against his ex-wife and the government through allegedly "therapeutic" rap lyrics on Facebook, the court says, it wasn't absolutely certain that he actually wished harm. The man isn't out of the woods yet (a lower court has to look at the case once again), but there's now a higher standard for putting him behind bars.

As much as Twitter is doing to fight harassment lately, it's clear that ill-willed users are still slipping past the social network's defenses -- and sometimes, in very conspicuous ways. Users have spotted trolls using Twitter's promoted tweet ads to spread racist and anti-transgender messages, guaranteeing a wide audience for their hate. The company tellsThe Guardian that it's pulling these ads and suspending the offending accounts, but it's not offering an explanation for why these tweets got through despite policies that explicitly ban hateful language. The failures suggest that Twitter's ad approvals are relatively hands-off, and that it needs to keep a much closer eye on things so that its ads remain friendly.

Twitter knows that it's not enough just to make it easier to report abusive tweets. You have to catch and discourage that abuse as often as possible, too. Appropriately, the social network is rolling out a broader abuse policy alongside tools that help it stop harassment quickly. The new rules now cover all promotions of violence against someone, not just "direct, specific" threats -- Twitter can crack down on more than the most serious attacks. That's particularly important for victims of systematic abuse, who frequently chastise Twitter for being soft on people who clearly wish harm but aren't explicit about it.

While Twitter has already simplified reporting abusive tweets, that's not enough if you're facing a very serious threat -- you want something that the police can use to get an arrest or restraining order. Thankfully, Twitter has delivered something that might help. A new email option lets you send yourself a copy of a threat report that you can take to law enforcement. While it only provides a basic summary of what happened, it both serves as an official record and helps officers understand what to do if they need private account information to make a bust.

In the ongoing battle agains trolls, abusive users and other rule-breakers, Twitter has expanded how it can attempt to squash tweet-based troubles. If someone is impersonating another through a Twitter account, or leaking sensitive personal data, anyone can now report it -- not just whoever is suffering from it. Perhaps more importantly, new "enforcement actions" will allow the company to deal with regular trouble-makers: those that simply create a new Twitter account when their previous one gets closed down.

For a company that's embedded itself so thoroughly in the fabric of modern communication, Twitter sure is having trouble getting more people to use it. The company just released its latest batch of quarterly financials, and while it handily generated more revenue and earnings per share than Wall Street analysts expected (think $479 million in revenue over the past three months), it's still not picking up new users as fast as everyone wants it to. This past quarter saw total user numbers surge to 288 million -- that's a 20 percent leap over this time last year, but only an increase of about 4 million users since Twitter's last quarterly info dump. Curiously, it looks like nearly all of those new users came from outside US borders, making this quarter the first with negligible US growth since Twitter's IPO.

Dick Costolo must be thrilled. People already have it out for him as it is.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has admitted that "we suck with dealing at trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years," according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge. He added that the problem has caused "core user after core user" to flee the platform and took personal responsibility. Though Twitter has suffered from issues around abuse and trolling for years -- with the recent GamerGate abuse of Anita Sarkeesian being just one egregious example -- the apparent breaking point for Costolo was a recent Guardian story by feminist writer Lindy West. In it, she talked about her interview on This American Life with a troll who assumed the identity of her beloved, deceased father on Twitter.

Tomorrow Twitter will release its latest quarterly earnings figures, but ahead of that Bloomberg has word that the service is bringing its "firehose" of data back to Google's search results. The two have been estranged ever since 2011 when Google announced its agreement to access Twitter's data directly had expired. As a result, it suspended the "realtime" search feature that included up-to-the-minute results from social media. Of course back then Google was still going all-in on Google+, Twitter had expanded relationships with Bing and Yahoo, and webOS was still kicking. Now, Google has backed off of the hard sell for its social media platform, Twitter finally launched a decent search tool and there has been significant turnover in the executives at both companies. According to the report, at some point in the first half of this year Google will again include Tweets as soon as they're posted, so there's one more reason to check for typos before hitting Enter.

Update: In another curiously-timed release, The Verge has obtained an internal memo from Twitter CEO Dick Costolo admitting that "we suck" at dealing with online abuse. There's no word on how it will fix its practices going forward, but at least there's recognition of the problem.

If you've ever been the victim of harassment on Twitter, you know how hard it has been to report abuse until now; you couldn't really do much on mobile, and the complicated process made it difficult to flag all but the scariest threats. Thankfully, Twitter is at last simplifying the reporting process to give you a better defense against abusers. You now need less initial information to make a complaint, and the reporting system is easier to understand as a whole. You should also have less trouble reporting harassment when you aren't the target, and a mobile-native interface lets you deal with troublemakers away from a computer.

Online harassers in the UK may soon face much harsher consequences for their scare tactics. Justice Secretary Chris Grayling tells the Daily Mail that a newly proposed measure will let magistrates send cases of internet abuse and threats to crown courts, boosting the maximum prison time for those cases from six months to two years. The measure likely won't intimidate the most determined of trolls if it takes effect, but it could serve as a warning to "casual" abusers who don't think they'll pay a price for their long-distance hate campaigns. Given how nightmarish internet threats have become as of late, the proposed tougher sentencing might be well-timed.

On the face of it, Samsung's latest report on working conditions at the factories of its Chinese suppliers follows just the kind of careful, lawyer-scrutinized language we'd expect from a big multinational. It repeats the manufacturer's earlier insistence that no children have been employed, while at the same time admitting that there have been "several instances of inadequate practices at the facilities" concerning workers being made to do too much overtime, not being given proper contracts, and being fined if they turn up late or are absent -- issues which had already been revealed at one supplier, and which Samsung promises to fix by the end of 2014.

Burrow further into the document, however, and Samsung's list of promised "corrective actions" implies that its internal investigation has uncovered evidence of other serious problems. These include "physical and verbal abuse," sexual harassment, a lack of first-aid equipment and inadequate safety training. Some information is also conspicuous by its absence -- at least in the short report linked below -- including clarity on how widespread any of these failings were among the 109 companies (and 65,000 employees) that have now been audited. Did they crop up at just a handful of factories, or were they endemic across China? We have no idea, but given how much data Samsung has now dutifully amassed, it surely does. We've asked the company for more detail and will update if we hear back.

Most companies might think twice about inflicting blunt force trauma upon their carefully crafted prototypes, but most companies just don't love baseball the way iRobot does. While developing a mechanical hand for DARPA's Autonomous Robotic Manipulation program, iRobot took a metal baseball bat to its three-fingered prototype. No need to cringe, though -- the artificial appendage came away virtually unscathed. The hand's durability comes from its flexible feelers, fingers molded from soft polymers with embedded tactile sensors. Rather than bending at metallic joints, these digits are pulled tight by inexpensive cables made from fishing line -- not only can they take a beating, but should one snap, they're easy to replace. The soft fingers can pick up small objects, such as keys or credit cards and can hold about 50 pounds before slipping up. The hand's current iteration is in use on a DARPA test robot, but you can see the prototype take its licks in the video after the break.

It's been a few months since we checked in on the workers at Wintek, where they manufacture touchscreens for the likes of Apple. As you might remember, the former company was facing a lawsuit for chemical poisoning that occurred between May 2008 to August 2009 when the company substituted alcohol for n-hexane in the manufacturing process. Both Apple and Wintek maintain that ultimately a total of 137 people had been hospitalized, and all have recovered -- but as Reuters points out, daily exposure to the chemical has been known to cause "long-term and possibly irreversible nerve damage," and Wintek employees have maintained that the company has left them holding the bag for symptoms that could very well flare up again in the future (or, in some cases, never really went away). "We are unable to cope with the medical costs of treatment in the future," said Guo Ruiqiang, a worker at the plant. "We can only stay in the factory and see what happens. We just feel very helpless now." For Apple's part, the company has mandated that Wintek "work with a consultant to improve their Environmental Health and Safety processes and management systems" in anticipation of a complete reaudit of the facility in 2011. [Warning: PDF More Coverage link]

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Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:35:00 -050021|19854562http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/20/internet-content-filters-are-human-too-funnily-enough/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/20/internet-content-filters-are-human-too-funnily-enough/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/20/internet-content-filters-are-human-too-funnily-enough/%3Futm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%23commentsAlgorithms can only take you so far when you want to minimize obscene content on your social networking site. As the amount of user-uploaded content has exploded in recent times, so has the need for web content screeners, whose job it is to peruse the millions of images we throw up to online hubs like Facebook and MySpace every day, and filter out the illicit and undesirable muck. Is it censorship or just keeping the internet from being overrun with distasteful content? Probably a little bit of both, but apparently what we haven't appreciated until now is just how taxing a job this is. One outsourcing company already offers counseling as a standard part of its benefits package, and an industry group set up by Congress has advised that all should be providing therapy to their image moderators. You heard that right, people, mods need love too! Hit the source for more.

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Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:34:00 -040021|19560651http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/15/44-chinese-workers-sue-wintek-over-screen-cleaner-poisoning/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/15/44-chinese-workers-sue-wintek-over-screen-cleaner-poisoning/http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/15/44-chinese-workers-sue-wintek-over-screen-cleaner-poisoning/%3Futm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%23comments
If you've got an early Apple iPad, chances are its screen was cleaned with a banned substance called n-hexane, which releases a toxic nerve gas upon use. 2,000 workers at Wintek's East China LCD plant went on strike in January, claiming the substance was poisoning them, and now 44 of those reportedly affected are planning to sue. According to reports, the screen cleaner was originally used because it performed better than alcohol, but Wintek has since fired the factory manager who suggested n-hexane and discontinued its use. That didn't keep 62 workers from winding up in the hospital, however. The Guardian interviewed two hospitalized workers last week, and you'll find their stories at our more coverage link below. We're sure you'll agree these Chinese labor violations are getting out of hand -- let's hope this lawsuit spurs government and industry to do something concrete about worker abuse.

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Sat, 15 May 2010 16:04:00 -040021|19478688http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/31/nintendo-support-recommends-wiimote-abuse-to-puzzled-caller/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/31/nintendo-support-recommends-wiimote-abuse-to-puzzled-caller/http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/31/nintendo-support-recommends-wiimote-abuse-to-puzzled-caller/%3Futm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%23commentsController abuse has always been a mainstay of the video gaming existence -- no need to blame your thumbs when there's this hunk of plastic to chuck at the floor -- but who knew Nintendo was working such violence into its own official support curriculum? Wired's Russ Neumeier gave Nintendo support a ring when one of his Wiimotes stopped sensing motion and none of the usual fixes seemed to work. After explaining his situation, the Nintendo rep asked Russ smack the controller into his hand, button side down, two or three times. After being assured that she wasn't kidding, Russ did as he was told and was awarded with a fully functional Wiimote. We could see why Nintendo wouldn't go shouting about this "fix" on its official support literature, but it has us wondering if "blow into the cartridge, whack side of NES, insert cartridge, repeat" was the Nintendo-approved method all along.

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Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:20:00 -050021|1074420http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/27/mobiles-blamed-for-cyberbullying-dubbed-offensive-weapons/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/27/mobiles-blamed-for-cyberbullying-dubbed-offensive-weapons/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/27/mobiles-blamed-for-cyberbullying-dubbed-offensive-weapons/%3Futm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%23commentsAs if the UK didn't have enough gadget-related mischievousness going on, here's another liter of fuel for the perpetual fire. NASUWT -- that's the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers for those out of the loop -- is suggesting that mobile phones be classified as "potentially offensive weapons" and banned from school premises, all because a select few students found it necessary to use their handset to engage in "cyberbullying." Apparently, some students have used the camera function in their phones to snap pictures of their instructor, only to then post said images on "rating websites that can damage teachers' self esteem and careers." Sheesh, first iPods, now mobiles -- what are kids to do? Study?

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Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:19:00 -040021|927414http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/27/mobiles-blamed-for-cyberbullying-dubbed-offensive-weapons/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/27/mobiles-blamed-for-cyberbullying-dubbed-offensive-weapons/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/27/mobiles-blamed-for-cyberbullying-dubbed-offensive-weapons/%3Futm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%23commentsAs if the UK didn't have enough gadget-related mischievousness going on, here's another liter of fuel for the perpetual fire. NASUWT -- that's the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers for those out of the loop -- is suggesting that mobile phones be classified as "potentially offensive weapons" and banned from school premises, all because a select few students found it necessary to use their handset to engage in "cyberbullying." Apparently, some students have used the camera function in their phones to snap pictures of their instructor, only to then post said images on "rating websites that can damage teachers' self esteem and careers." Sheesh, first iPods, now mobiles -- what are kids to do? Study?

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Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:19:00 -040021|927413http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/19/naomi-campbell-hits-the-mop-and-bucket/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/19/naomi-campbell-hits-the-mop-and-bucket/http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/19/naomi-campbell-hits-the-mop-and-bucket/%3Futm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%23commentsNever before have we so rejoiced in our justice system than on this day of just desserts for the notorious abuser of cellphones -- and, incidentally, maids -- Naomi Campbell. Naomi showed up for her community service job at a sanitation garage today in NYC, where for five days she'll be mopping and sweeping while no doubt considering the grave crimes she has committed against hapless gadgetry. We only hope such punishment, along with the couple days of anger management classes, will be enough to reform this hardened criminal.

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Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:16:00 -040021|856003http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/19/naomi-campbell-hits-the-mop-and-bucket/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/19/naomi-campbell-hits-the-mop-and-bucket/http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/19/naomi-campbell-hits-the-mop-and-bucket/%3Futm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%23commentsNever before have we so rejoiced in our justice system than on this day of just desserts for the notorious abuser of cellphones -- and, incidentally, maids -- Naomi Campbell. Naomi showed up for her community service job at a sanitation garage today in NYC, where for five days she'll be mopping and sweeping while no doubt considering the grave crimes she has committed against hapless gadgetry. We only hope such punishment, along with the couple days of anger management classes, will be enough to reform this hardened criminal.